Beginners

Welcome to one of the greatest hobbies in the whole world!

How computer controlled animated lighting works

Software You'll use a piece of software on your computer to design a "sequence" of lighting effects. These effects might include simple on/off, or pulsating on/off, or gradually getting brighter (called a ramp up) or gradual dimming (ramp down). And if you like, the software also allows you to make these effects occur in time to a song or other piece of music you've chosen. So if the music has a nice drum beat, maybe you want some lights to blink in time with the beat. Or maybe you want the lights to gradually get brighter as the music gets louder or maybe dim the lights down when the music is soft. The point is that you can control exactly when you want the effects to occur. In addition to that, the software allows you to separately control many, many strings of lights or even individual lights if you want. Each string or individual light is called a "channel." So your sequence of effects might include dozens of strings of lights (dozens of channels), each of which you can control independently from all the others, and you also get to decide when and how bright you want them to be.

The software also provides normal editing capabilities such as saving and changing the settings later if you want. It also allows you to group several sequences together to make a "program" or "show." And once you have designed your "show" the software can also be used to schedule what days and times you want the show to start and stop. Pretty cool stuff. Total control.

How does the computer control the lights? When you "play" your sequence (or your show program) on your computer, the software causes your computer to send out special signals to electronic devices that are out in the yard. These devices are called "controllers" and the lights are connected to the controllers. Some controllers can handle only 8 or fewer "channels" of lights while others can handle many thousands of channels. Often you can interconnect multiple smaller controllers together to control even more channels. The process of interconnecting them is called "daisy-chaining." The lights are plugged into the controllers and the controllers are plugged into electrical power. When the controller gets a control signal from the computer to turn on a certain channel, the controller's electronics figure out which channel it is and then allows electricity to go to that channel, illuminating that channel's lights.

How does the computer connect to the controllers? Computers and controllers are often physically connected to one another by wire, often using inexpensive everyday network cabling (called cat5 cable). More often than not, there's a USB or other type of adapter/dongle that facilitates communication between the computer and the controllers through the wires. Sometimes, instead of using cat5 cabling, some users replace the physical wiring by using wireless communication and various combinations of small transmitter/receiver setups. Some of these wireless systems can work upward of 1/4 mile away! The electronic mechanism that computers and controllers use to talk to one another in the hobby are named serial RS-232, serial RS-485, and Ethernet, the same mechanism used for computer networking. On top of the electronic mechanism is a "language" that the computers and controllers speak. Another word for this language is a "protocol" and popular protocols are Renard, DMX, and E1.31. The Renard protocol can easily run on top of serial RS-232 and/or serial RS-485, DMX can run on top of RS-485 and Ethernet, and E1.31 is Ethernet only.

So in a nutshell, the computer plays a "sequence" that you created, it sends control signals out a wire to the controller, the controller decodes the signal and turns on/off the appropriate lights.

Audio Another really important thing to know is that while your computer is playing the sequence, if you've tied the sequence to music, the computer's sound card will also be playing the music, too. Some hobbyists use amplifiers and put speakers outdoors so visitors can hear the music while others use a small, low-power FM transmitter to transmit the music to visitors' car radios so they can listen in the comfort of their vehicles. If you have matched your lighting effects to a musical track, the blinking lights won't make a lot of sense to your visitors if they can't hear the music that goes with it. Audio is a very, very important part of the hobby because it brings all the effects together and makes sense to the viewers. Low-power FM transmitters are not expensive -- anywhere from $25-$100.